Marcus Lemonis / YouTube Marcus Lemonis addresses Jacksonville development
The newest HGTV host Marcus Lemonis is best known for his CNBC reality show “The Profit”. The show saw him travel across the United States and provide expertise and funding to struggling businesses in exchange for a percentage of shares in the company.
The Lebanese-born host was raised in Miami, Florida, and his new HGTV series, “The Renovator” sees the self-taught designer return to his home state. According to the Jacksonville Business Journal, Lemonis, who lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, filmed much of “The Renovator” in the greater Jacksonville area. In an interview with the publication, Lemonis opened up about his concerns over the area’s development.
“I’m actually pretty concerned about downtown Jacksonville,” Lemonis said, “For decades, we’ve heard about things that are going to happen downtown. The riverfront is going to be revived, this is going to happen, that is going to happen. A lot of it hasn’t happened.”
Marcus Lemonis Expected More Progress in Jacksonville
Marcus Lemonis has worked in the Jacksonville area for a long time. In 2014, through his show “The Profit”, the entrepreneur began investing in and working with the candy company Sweet Pete’s. On the show, Lemonis helped business owners Peter and Allison Behringer out of a bad business deal, and he has since helped the company expand and open locations throughout the country.
“When I bought the Seminole Club [as the new Sweet Pete’s retail location] years ago, my expectation was that area properties would get renovated. Buildings next to us were in bad shape, and we were right next to city hall,” Lemonis told the Jacksonville Business Journal of the city.
The host went on to say that he feels the responsibility for the lack of progress in Jacksonville falls on the city’s government and big businesses. He says big businesses have the ability to “turn the beautiful riverfront —which is the jewel of our city — into something we can celebrate.”
Lemonis hopes to contribute to this effort in his new HGTV show “The Renovator”. Read more about the show below.
Sweet Pete’s is Set to Return in ‘The Renovator’
In HGTV’s “The Renovator”, Marcus Lemonis travels to different families to find problems in their homes, and help provide solutions to both their physical homes through renovations and to their personal problems through honest and open conversation.
“Move a wall, change an attitude, that’s how I see it,” Lemonis says in the series premiere, which aired on HGTV on October 11 and is available on discovery+. In the episode, Lemonis works with a family of six and is not only able to update the floor plan of their cluttered three-bedroom home to allow more storage for easier cleaning, but he is also able to start an open dialogue between the parents to help alleviate tension in their relationship and in the home. The estimated increase in value of the premiere property was $373,000.
Many local Jacksonville businesses helped during “The Renovator” production, providing services at discounted rates. Lemonis shared his gratitude for these businesses, saying “They did all this without a lot of fanfare, but I wanted to make sure they receive the recognition they deserve. These are the finest professionals the Jacksonville area has to offer.”
Lemonis’s production included a list of Jacksonville businesses that pitched in during the production, and Sweet Pete’s Candy Shop made the list.
New episodes of “The Renovator” air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern.
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